At the present time, specialty contractors typically employ one of three commonly used methods to repair cracked and bowed basement walls, depending upon the contractor's personal preference and experience, as well as the specific conditions involved with each installation. The three commonly used methods include earth anchors, vertical steel I-beams, and carbon fiber straps.
Earth anchors consist of a series of steel plates positioned on the inner surface of a failing basement retainment wall. The plates are held in place by long steel tension rods that extend through pre-drilled holes in the wall to another steel plate buried in the soil outside the wall. This method requires considerable installation time and cost, and requires disruption to outside lawn, shrubbery or pavement. In addition, earth anchors are not supported by actual engineering design.
Earth anchors rely on a design process that is fundamentally unsound from an engineering standpoint as it uses a series of relatively small steel plates embedded in the soil outside the house to stabilize much larger sections of wall. It is based on soil pressing against the small plates to resist the same soil pressure against the much larger basement wall. This method cannot be mathematically proven to work using accepted engineering standards. In addition, earth anchors require a significant amount of space outside the house, making it non-useable in many locations with existing obstructions or tight property lines.
While earth anchors are known to be generally effective in many installations and sometimes come with reasonably good warranties, their higher cost, invasive installation requirements, lack of reliability and lack of flexibility are cause for concern.
With the vertical steel I-beam method, a series of vertical steel I-beams are installed along the inside surface of a failing basement wall to stabilize that wall against outside soil pressure. This option requires removal and subsequent replacement of portions of the existing concrete floor slab and finished ceiling at each installation point, requiring increased installation time and cost. Furthermore, the I-beams extend relatively far out into the basement space.
The carbon fiber strap repair method uses a series of “high-tech” carbon fiber straps installed along the inside surface of a failing basement wall to stabilize that wall against outside soil pressure. While the carbon fiber strap repair method clearly works well in certain circumstances, its cost and limitations make it undesirable. The carbon fiber strap repair method has a high installation cost and is not applicable for use on walls which are extensively bowed.
Actually, none of these prior art methods can move the bowed wall back into its original straight and plum condition over time. It is a principal object of the present invention to provide a system which eliminates these foregoing disadvantages of the prior art systems.